


A Little While Longer (Ghoul AU)

by city_noise



Series: CC Ghoul AU [1]
Category: Camp Camp (Web Series)
Genre: (but like not in a weird way), (technically???), Adult Max (Camp Camp), Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Blood and Gore, Fluff and Angst, Ghoul!Max, Graphic Description of Corpses, M/M, Requited Love, ghoul au, ima tag this as vampires because its basically just edgier vampires, no sex but theyre adults they make jokes sometimes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-08
Updated: 2019-11-08
Packaged: 2021-02-01 02:55:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21346000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/city_noise/pseuds/city_noise
Summary: Max hates most of his life as a ghoul, hates constantly being on the brink of death and not being able to tell anyone about it, but he's still very good at keeping secrets. So when his best friend Neil eventually starts catching up to his suspicious behavior, he's not quite ready yet to give up the truth.
Relationships: Max/Neil (Camp Camp)
Series: CC Ghoul AU [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1538818
Comments: 7
Kudos: 54





	A Little While Longer (Ghoul AU)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Forestwater](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Forestwater/gifts).

> I want to thank @Kuzann for her kind beta work, as well as @ForestWater for her kickass feedback on the story and prose! These two authors are absolute powerhouses and awesome people so please check them out!
> 
> This is a story I've been chewing on for a while, you might recognize it from the cc ghoul AU artwork on tumblr. Some people wanted an expansion to the AU and it took a while to come up with something that worked, so i hope you all enjoy it ❤❤

It was 3:00 in the morning and Max was hurrying across the barren streets of his hometown, a stream of viscous, black blood leaking steadily from his gut and all over the pavement. Through what was left of his shredded shirt, a steady stream of dense, dark smoke was leaking from his body— dense enough to obscure the view of the night sky. The sound of his breaths broke through the uncanny silence of the night, heavy and desperate, his lungs struggling to keep up the pace as he ran for his life without turning back. 

Right as his vision had started blurring from the energy expense, Max tripped on his feet and fell head first into the pavement. 

“ARGH— FUCK!” he screamed as he bit on his sleeve to muffle the noise. The impact, enough to audibly crack the side of his skull, left him writhing in pain on the floor as he felt a burning, acid-like sensation spread through his brain. A big puff of smoke started streaming from it, then, thick and black like burning carbon, the work his cells rushing to regenerate his skull. After a good while lying there, trembling, his body recovered enough to let him lift his upper body, the throbbing inside his head just manageable enough to allow him to walk to a better hiding place. After getting in an alley and making sure no one had followed him, he took the chance to sit down and check himself.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck—” Max cursed as he kneeled down and rested his back against a wall. He unzipped his hoodie, revealing the shredded shirt underneath, as well as the huge, open wound spread across his stomach. The substance leaking from it was nothing like blood anymore, now strikingly black and gel-like, binding to his flesh and almost weaving it back together like a living, breathing glue. The mess it made was revolting, even for Max’s standards; it was forming bubbles and sticking to the remains of cloth as it reacted with his gut, but it  _ worked. _ The carbon-like smoke flowed from the wound and into the air, a tell that it would eventually heal him back.

His right hand was recovering, too, but slowly; looking at it rendered it unrecognizable, it’d been  _ mutilated _ , the tendons and bones torn apart from being crushed by a ghoul’s grip. Its skin and insides had darkened like rot, the bile spreading almost invasively across the appendage as it tried to grow it all back into place. The man who had crushed it had been nearly twice Max’s size, armed with long and sharp fingernails to help dig into and through his palm, so really he was grateful the wound wasn’t so infected it was unrecoverable.

Max let out a heavy sigh as he held onto the hand by the wrist. He knew he wouldn't get this lucky ever again; it was the first time in months that he'd messed up this bad, the first mistake this dangerous, and it felt awful. He still couldn’t be sure he'd make it; the ghouls he ran from were many and they were strong, the cut they left on him was huge, and to top it all off, his regeneration factor was working like absolute crap today —more than usual.

His face lit up as he remembered something, and he quickly looked through his pants’ pockets to find a bump in the shape of a cheap plastic cell phone. When he examined it, the screen was broken —he didn’t mourn it, this was another cheap burner from a stockpile he'd been saving for big sales like this —but it still worked well enough to make a call. 

“Nerris, It's Max.” He said as soon as the call picked up, actively attempting to make his tone as sharp as possible. 

"Uh, Is it done?" a male voice he barely recognized answered. "I mean- I mean the thing. The sale, Nerris' sale. Did you do it?" the deep voice stammered. "Oh, I’m Harrison, by the way."

Max breathed a sigh of frustration. Nerris was probably busy with something else, if it was one of her goons talking, so it'd be a while before he could have a word with her. "Sale was a bust. Guy got suspicious with the vials and  _ apparently _ you idiots chose not to tell me until now that we were selling these guys crappy merchandise.”

"Oh," said Harrison, anticlimactically. "Well, I'll tell her when she's back. She told me she had to deal with something and to watch out for when you called." Harrison then let out a big yawn. "Aw, sorry, it's just really early."

"Yeah, no shit."  _ Fucking asshole.  _ He was getting closer to his building, a shoddy old-looking dump even compared to the other shoddy old-looking dumps in the area, when he felt another lance of pain deep in his gut. He held back a scream, tried to muffle the noise by biting into his jacket, as he fumbled to get the door open.

"Argh, fuck- listen," he managed to say to Harrison after getting inside. "These guys are clearly not up for a 'refund' so you're gonna have to deal with them the hard way."

"Wait, wait,  _ we _ deal with it? You're the one who messed up the delivery."

"What? You're the ones who sent me the shitty merch! Do you even  _ check _ for this kind of shit?! I almost lost my head out there for you, jackass- ghah!" Max interrupted himself with a groan of pain, as he felt a bubble of bile pop on the inside his liver. "G-give me a second."

Max trotted up the stairs to the first floor and managed open his apartment lock after a few failed attempts. He hurried to the kitchen, opened one of the drawers and pulled out a med kit hidden inside a cabinet behind a wooden plate.

"Look," he continued, placing the cellphone between his head and shoulder, as he tried to use his left hand to cover his right with gauze. "I think I was able to trace one of their calls to somewhere in Costa Negra, I'm almost certain that's their HQ. If Nerris can sniff out where they're hiding their base from there we can make up for the losses-"

"Max?" called a voice nearby that Max immediately recognized, followed by a few knocks on his door. He interrupted the bandaging when the realization hit him; his long time friend was knocking on the door and still had a key to his apartment.

"Shit-" Max murmured to himself as he stood up and nearly fell over his chair.  _ What is he even doing here-  _ “Talk to you later,” he whispered into the burner before Harrison could protest, and shoved it back into his pants’ pocket.

"Max," continued the voice coming from the corridor, as Max heard the sound of Neil’s key fiddling with the lock. "I saw you getting inside earlier. I know you're awake, just let me in-"

“WAIT!" Max said, his voice way more desperate that he intended it to be, right before he pushed back on the door with all the weight of his torso. The door closed again with a bang, before Neil had a chance to open it by an inch.

“Max, what the hell is going on?!” Neil demanded from the other side, but he didn’t try to get back in again. “What’s wrong, what are you doing in there?!”

God. Fucking. Dammit. He saw him, he saw him, he saw his body while it was-

Max's eyes darted around the room, his brain too busy trying to hide evidence to worry about his friend’s questions. He glared at his hand and stomach, both still releasing a less dense but steady flow of dark smoke. He turned to his bile-stained shirt still on the floor, the leftover gauze scattered around the kitchen, and an open medicine kit with bandages sticking out. 

_ Okay, I can fix this. _

"Um, sorry Neil, can you uh…" he purposely stammered while he silently darted toward his destroyed shirt and shoved it in his trash can. "Can you just give me a minute? This place is kind of a mess."

His senses detected Neil's slightly exasperated breath as he hesitated. "Sure, sure, whatever."

Max's heart was racing, not just from jumping around the apartment cleaning everything up, but from frustration as he tried to figure out two things. One, how much Neil had seen if he saw him go inside the building. And two, why had he even thought to come here in the first place...?

He was kneeling down and shoving the med kit back in its hiding place when it hit him. 

Neil was onto him. 

Neil suspected- no, he  _ knew _ Max was hiding something big, it was obvious, and like he always does he'd jumped straight into trying to disprove his theory without giving so much as a second thought to staying alive in the process, and now he was gonna catch him red handed and report him to the government or the science community of whoever the fuck and then get killed a few days after-  _ Oh shiiiiiiit. _

_ Okay _ , Max told himself, deep breaths.  _ It's not over yet. You don't know how much he knows, so figure it out and cover up what you can. _ And if that plan failed, well… he still had a chance to try and explain things to him. Face to face.

Max covered what was left on his wounds in gauze, tightening the bandage until the smoke left leaking out was as invisible as possible. He put on a new shirt —a Fallout t-shirt Neil had bought him at one of his nerd conventions —and covered his arms under a bomber jacket, finishing it off with a glove to cover up the remains of his mangled hand. The look was suspicious, to say the least, but at least making up excuses for bandages was much easier than making them up for superhuman self-healing.

"I'm gonna let you in, ok?" Max said, hiding his maimed hand in his jacket's pocket as he reached out for the handle, but before he could Neil was already using his own key.

"Um, hey!" Neil smiled awkwardly after pulling out his key from the lock. Max had a chance to look at him, then: his tight curls looked messier than usual, tied in a loose ponytail behind his head, and now that he wasn't wearing his glasses Max could see hints of bags under his eyes.

"Hey, what the hell are you doing here. It's the middle of the night."

"Actually it's closer to 3:40 in the morning," Neil clarified as he let himself in, Max stepping aside and giving him a glare. "Don't look at me like that," Neil complained, "you're always awake at night for some reason! Not like I'm keeping you up or anything." He paused and took a seat in his small kitchen table. "You know, you wouldn't look so chronically ill all the time if you spent more than two and a half hours in bed each night."

"Well you're one to talk, you look like a racoon fucked a mole rat! You're such a morning person, it's embarrassing."

"Well, well you- oh, shhhut up." Neil slurred as he let his head fall on the table. 

Max fell silent and rested his back against the fridge, arms crossed, hopefully making clear he was waiting for an explanation.

"Look, I'm sorry about this," Neil said, looking up at him. "I came here earlier because I was feeling like shit and needed to sleep anywhere but on campus."

"Oh." Max looked at him, trying to figure out how believable that excuse was, but decided not to press him on it. 

"I drove here, knocked on the door but you didn't answer! I assumed you were just asleep so I thought I'd come inside and wait, but, well..."

"You came into my room like a creep and I wasn't there?"

"No! ...Well, yeah, basically." He was genuinely embarrassed, which was kinda cute, but now Max was just hoping he hadn't left any conspicuous blood stained objects lying around in his room before he went outside. 

"Hey it's fine, dude. You guys have the key, the point is for you to show up when you want."

"Yeah, I guess… still, I'm sorry it's late. Well, early." He said. "What I wanted to tell you is, when I was heading back home I thought I heard your voice, and when I went after you I saw the smoke."

Max froze. He made the effort of his life to look unamused.

"Uuuh, smoke? W-what do you-"

"Listen, you don't have to hide it for me. I know I'm not wearing glasses, but I know what I saw."

Max promptly shut himself up. After a few miliseconds of panic, he was starting to tell him how there was a  _ perfectly reasonable explanation for this- _

"Max, listen, I don't care if you're smoking right now. Really. I know I used to bug you over permanent brain damage before, and I still will, but you're an adult and I didn't mean to nag you about it. I was just surprised you wouldn't just tell me you were getting into weed again-" OH. "-after months telling me you'd been sober and-"

"YES. THE WEED I AM SMOKING. YES THAT'S EXACTLY IT YOU CAUGHT ME."

"...Um." Neil blinked a couple of times. "I… uh… appreciate the honesty?"

An awkward silence filled the room. Max just kept his mouth shut and nodded silently, trying to hide his relief.

"Buuut yeah, anyway, the reason I'm worried about you is you're looking like a corpse right now."  _ Oh, you have no idea. _ "You've been gripping your stomach like you're about puke since I came here. Have you been drinking again, too?"

"Uuuuuuh, yeah, yeah. I mean, just a bit, really, it's just been so long and my gut's having a hard time-" Max stammered to answer, and Neil made a face as if he was resigned to accepting lies at this point. Wow, Max was usually great at lying, but the stress combined with the still-painful turnings inside his stomach and the compression of the bandages made it impossible to even control his body language properly. He was just uncomfortable, his mind aggressively fishing for anything close to a topic change.

As if on cue, Neil pointed out the elephant in the room. "Listen. I know you like your privacy and I know you don't like me meddling with your life. I just... I want you to know you can tell me stuff. Doesn't have to be everything, but, I want to be able to help you if you're in trouble."

Max wasn't sure how to respond to that, and his brain really wasn't in the proper space to bullshit right now. And so he defaulted to snark.

"So, you came here to give me a pep talk?"

Neil looked nervously at his side. Max took the time to sit next to him as he talked. 

"Look. The reason that I, that I had the idea to come here is, I wanna be honest with you too. And I know it's stupid and it's fucked up but, I keep thinking that I  _ have _ to know because I'm your friend. But like, I keep asking you to be honest with me when I'm not."

"Wait, no, that's not-"

"Let me finish. I… I don't wanna hurt you, or- or corner you or trap you. I just want to clear things up. So, if you tell me something you're hiding I tell you something as well, okay? And if I'm like, putting you on the spot or something you can tell me and I stop it."

Max glared at him with a mix of confusion and curiosity.

"Well…" Max started, then took a deep breath. Let's properly workshop the lie this time. It should probably be a half truth, and be bad enough that it would require his lying earlier, but not too much outside his usual behavior.

"The truth is…" Max said, then forced another deep breath, this time deliberate. "I lied. I have been… on a bit of a spiral right now. And…"  _ Half truth, half truth, _ "I'm really short on money so I kind of took a sketchy deal today."

"Sketchy deal?"

"It's better if you don't know the details. Thing is it didn't go well, and I've been in a bad mood and… well, things escalated and I got beat up." 

"What?!"

_ Too much truth, too much truth. _ "Like, a day or so ago, got a few punches to the ribs, it wasn't that big a deal! I got a stomachache at worst. But like, I couldn't tell anyone so I got frustrated and I've just been smoking a lot since then." 

Ok, that excuse was kind of weak, so now for a bit of sympathy fishing, "And… I've just felt so bad because I wanted to tell you and Nikki. I really did want to. It's just... I just feel so alone with this and like I can't burden you guys with it or you'll hate me-"  _ too much truth, fuck, dial it back! _ "-ok that's probably overdramatic but. Yeah. I just don't wanna get you all worried because of how much of a fuckup I am with my money-"

And then Neil kissed him.

Didn't grab his face or angle himself right, not at all, so Max got his upper lip crushed against his own teeth from the sheer force of impact. But then it kept going, the warmth against his lips, for one, two, three seconds —and Max didn't pull back. And Neil didn't pull back either, not until the fifth second it took for his panic reflex to set in.

"F-fffuck, I'm sorry!" Neil said as he backed out ungracefully, so fast he almost fell over his chair. Max was too shocked to react, not having moved from where he'd been when it happened, just looking straight at Neil as he gasped for air and covered his mouth with his boney hand. "Jesus, I'm- I'm an idiot, fuck, I'm sorry I ruined- I-"

"Pfft." Max let out a chuckle. Neil only looked more horrified, his hand trembling against his mouth as his face turned a deeper red.

"Ah, fuck, what was I thinking. Of course I'm being ridiculous, this was a terrible idea."

"No, no, it's not that!" Max said with a smile, which quickly turned into open laughter. "God, you just came here because of this? That was  _ it _ ?" He was looking at a lifetime in government custody here, not  _ this _ , he was trying not to say out loud. He was now laughing so hard it was starting to feel like someone was stabbing his intestines.

"S-stop mocking me!" Neil said, now a bit angrier, and Max did his best to calm down before Neil freaked out further.

"Sorry, sorry-" he tried to say between gasps for air. "I'm just saying," Max said, gently putting his hand on Neil's shoulder with a chuckle. "If you wanted to ask me out you could have just started with that, man. You're being so dramatic right now."

If Neil's face hadn't turned completely red by now, he was definitely as close to it as humanly possible. "But, I- It's not just about a-" He interrupted himself with a snicker. "God, you're an asshole!" He said, gently pushing him back while he bit down a smile himself.

"Seriously, just get a guy some coffee first, geez," Max joked in return, as they both took a second to let out a few more snickers. Woah, okay, out of all possible paths this could have gone down on, this one was probably easier to handle. He let himself stop thinking for a second, the urgency slowly washing away as he pulled Neil closer. And when he drove his lips against his again, and felt his friend push back harder and grip his hair, he felt like he might be able to keep up this lie just a little while longer.

…...

"Uh, Max?" Asked Neil, a while later.

Max stopped leaving little kisses under Neil's ear and looked up to him.

"Can I sleep over?"

_ Bad idea. Still bleeding internally, Neil needs to go. Time for a diversion. _

"Woah, woah, bro, weren't you gonna ask me out for coffee first?"

"NOT LIKE THAT," Neil blurted out, and was going to continue clarifying himself when Max stopped him.

"I know, I know, I'm messing around. Hey, it's like 5 AM. You've got class tomorrow," Max said as he stood up, carefully hiding his gloved hand inside his pocket. "And I have a hangover to deal with. We can worry about all the fun aftermath stuff later." Max pulled on Neil's shoulder so he would stand up with him, and after considering it a bit, he placed his good hand on his friend's cheek. Neil leaned in to his touch, still hesitant but not nearly as much as before.

Max's phone started buzzing in his pants' pocket. He removed his hand from Neil's face and hurried to turn it off, because he would _ deal with this later _ , dammit.

"Who was that?" Neil asked after Max had pressed the button to hang up.

"Don't worry about it." Max said, hoping he’d drop the subject. He grabbed Neil by the arm again to get them both moving out the door. “So, what do you say? Up for coffee this weekend?”   
  
Neil snorted. “You know I don't drink coffee.”

“I’ll buy you a smoothie, then.” Max teased him with a sly grin as he opened the door again for them. “Come on, go get some sleep. When you’re like me, you learn that two and a half hours of sleep’s better than nothing.”

Neil let out a last, small chuckle, and then stood there looking at him as if waiting for something. 

_ Oh, right, this is allowed now, _ he thought to himself right before tipping his toes to give Neil another kiss. He closed the distance between them, slow and deliberate, opening his mouth just enough to taste him without scaring him off.

His phone rang again.

“Uh, I gotta take this.” Max said, apologetic. “See ya later, dweeb.” He closed the sentence as he gently patted down Neil’s cheek, as if messing with him, and locked the door before Neil could say anything back.

……...

  
  


“Hey heeeey! What’s up, Maxie?!” a high-pitched, coarse voice practically yelled from the burner's speaker. “Heard you didn’t have such a nice time with the Casters, huh?”

“That’s one way of putting it,” Max retorted, too tired right now to be angry anymore. He took off his glove and the bandages underneath, revealing his recovered yet still dead-looking hand healing well. He opened and closed his fist a few times, just to test the improvements, and let himself smile when he saw it working again. “They broke the vials, too. Hope the risk was worth getting me almost killed down there.”

“Oh don’t you worry about it! Your track record was getting too perfect anyway, you could use a bit of a reality check once in a while.” Nerris dismissed him. "Plus, it’s like you said! We’ll get you some revenge eventually, long as your little hacking trick thing is on the right track.”

“Believe me, it is.” Max assured her, already inside his room and sitting down in front of his laptop. He typed in the password, revealing an array of criminal records and files he’d been collecting over the past few weeks. “We didn’t manage to get any money from them today, but now I’m sure my hunch was correct. You use my intel, and getting some payback from these guys should be a piece of cake. If you’re willing to pay for it, of course.”

“Uh-huh, you’re getting the pay when the job’s done, Maxie. It’s the rules.” Nerris insisted, letting out a content sigh, followed by uneven static like she'd dropped her phone in cloth.

“Plus," a voice distinctly  _ not _ coming from the phone said against his ear. "It’s not like you don’t owe me a favor already.”

"FUCK!" Max exclaimed, jumping from his seat and almost dropping his laptop. "Nerris, I TOLD you to stop fucking doing that!" He said as he turned to the girl behind him. She was just enjoying herself, her shit eating grin adorned in braces, laughing heartily as she placed her hand on her short curly hair.

"Sorry, sorry, I had to! You're just SO easy to sneak up on," Nerris said, completely unconcerned by Max's death glare. "Seriously, are you sure you're even a ghoul? 'Cause I've been considering you're actually more of an over-eager senile vampire-"

"Did you just come here to make fun of me? Why are you here?" Max cut her off, visibly annoyed. 

"Oh, Harrison told me about your little run-in, is all. Thought you could use a snack to cheer you up a little!" Nerris threw Max a package, long and clumsily folded in paper and tape. "Take it as a token of apology."

Max blinked a bit, then calmly opened the wrapping just enough to take a peek inside; just enough to recognize the gray, rotting skin of a severed arm. The flesh's stench penetrated his nose, almost instantly, and he quickly closed it back to keep it from permeating into the room.

"I couldn't help but come here myself and save you a bit of trouble, you know, my bleeding heart and all." Nerris continued. "With this and the others I'm saving up for you, I'd think that's plenty enough to pay for everything this time."

Max looked at the closed package and thought for a moment. "This is fresher than usual. Few days at most. How-?"

"Heeeeey, you're not in a place to be picky, buddy! And besides, I thought you didn't like me to tell you where I get these."

"I don't." Max said. "Just curious, that's all."

"Great! Tell you what," she said as she glanced at the computer, "How about I tell you  _ after _ you give me the files?"

"Fine, fine, here. I put them in a drive for you." Max put Nerris' "gift" aside, looked around the room for a USB stick, and threw it in her direction. "I'll tell you which of these guys I saw during the drop-off, but for now this should be enough to hunt them down. Also, on second thought," he said as he turned to look at the package, "don't actually tell me anything."

"Awesome." Said Nerris after she caught the drive in her hand. She walked backwards towards Max's window, readying to leave. "And one more thing."

"Yeah?"

"Say hi to your tall friend for me, mmkay? You've got to introduce us sometime!"

And she leapt off, disappearing behind his windowsill. Max used his hand —his maimed hand, now fully done reviving the muscle and recovering the skin around it —to take out the woman's arm and place it on his lap. The sight was somehow more haunting than the sort of months-old, bug-ridden corpses he was used to eating. It felt… more real, in a way. He was pretty sure it was a woman's arm, her nails still having remains of plastic manicure attached, and he did his best to whisk away his thoughts as he wrapped it back up and placed it next to him.

He told himself he could worry about the implications of today, the whole new ordeal of preparations and tricks and  _ lies _ he's just signed up for, a bit later. Really, his situation couldn't possibly change  _ that _ much, all things considered; he'd known Neil for years, and he prided himself in being a lot more observant than he was, so an additional…  _ thing, _ going on between them couldn't possibly complicate his secret-keeping that much.

He took off his nerd t-shirt one last time, looked at it fondly for a moment, then replaced it with something he wouldn't mind getting stained. He took a bite of the arm, the blood inside producing a gross  _ squish  _ sound as he pierced it with his fangs, and put it away before he went back to bed.

-End.-

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. All comments are so, so appreciated!
> 
> Dedicating this to Forestwater, since the writing she did for my AU was so amazing and interesting and FUN it eventually compelled me to do some writing of my own —not to mention the great tips she gave me to improve this very work. Thank you so so much!


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